The Ambitious Courtnie Packer

.

By Jessica Allen

Ever since she was 8 years old Courtnie Packer has always wanted to be a journalist and is on her way to be being a great one.

The oldest of four sisters, Packer grew up in southern Utah until her family moved to Tremonton where she attended Bear River High School and graduated with the class of 2007.

While attending Bear River, Packer got an internship at KVNU radio station and reported a lot of college news stories and reported the news at night for two and a half years until she quit over the past summer to go to work for KSL.

Working for her high school newspaper, the Standard Examiner, Packer interviewed the features editor at Utah State where she told she was coming to USU and the editor at the time told her she should come and work for the Statesman.

Later the same editor e-mailed Packer after she had seen some of her work and asked her to apply to be the senior writer.

Ironically Packer is not a Journalism print major but rather is going into broadcast as she has a love for radio.

“I’d like to do KSL radio in Salt Lake,” Packer said, “I want to be in front of the mic. Getting involved with newspaper was actually sort of a fluke.”

Packer said she only took one journalism class in high school and when she became the senior writer at USU she said she wanted to quit all the time because she felt like she didn’t know what she was doing and thought her stories were horrible.

Packer said she would often meet with Brittny Jones who was last year’s features editor for the Statesman, to discuss her stories and was always in there working on them with her and finding ways to make them better.

Later on when the semester was coming to a close Jones urged her to apply for her position for the upcoming year, which Packer did.

Now Packer and her features assistant Amanda take turns working on different issues of the paper, like the layout and editing.

Packer explained that as a senior writer she took stories that need to be done quickly and had them thrown at her last minute.

Last year, Packer said, she had to do stories all the time for the Statesman however this year her senior writer hasn’t had to take too many and sometimes ends up calling her asking what he should do as he doesn’t have anything to do.

Packer currently has 16 staff writers working on the features stories leaving her, Amanda, and her senior writer with little to do.

She had a goal to do a story every other week but it’s been hard to do that this year as she has so many writers.

Sometimes she has to pull a story out that she really wants to do before letting her writers take their picks.

Packer said she that it really is a good job for her as it can easily fit into her schedule and is flexible and has really come to love it.

On top of working for the Statesman she also writes once a week two minute news casts for the student radio Profusion that are reported at the top of every hour.

Packer is well aware of how young she is taking this position as features editor as half of her writers are older than her.

Packer said she has always wanted to be a journalist and when she was eight she had a neighbor who she would go and tend the kids of while the mother did a radio show in the garage and then e-mailed it to the station.

The mother would often show Packer the equipment and what she did, and since then Packer knew that was what she wanted to do and as she got older she continued to pursue it despite her father’s insistence that she should try the medical field as he thought at that was her calling.

Packer has a love for news that is sometimes made fun of by her roommates as she reads the Deseret News every morning at breakfast reading all of it except the classifieds.

Packer is already into her second year here and is in her third semester with only a year and a half left to go.

However her world does not revolve solely around school and the Statesman as she is also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is a relief society teacher in her ward.

Between school and church she also dates and claims that she is a magnet for weirdoes as she described many of the men she has gone out with.

Packer said that she loves building her resume and does everything she can to make it impressive to future employers as she wants to have an edge of the competition when she leaves school in search of a job when she graduates.

Living by her planner Packer said she is very organized and loves to have everything written down.

For Packer the biggest weakness that she sees in her self is not being tough enough on people when they come to her and say they can’t get a story done.

Often times Packer said she is too nice and will just blow it off and find some way to make it work rather than making the writer take more responsibility.

Some stories that Packer has done has really affected her like an adoption story that she did where she went and interviewed young mothers, most of them college students who had given up their babies, which really tore her up as she watched as they sat and sobbed right in front of her.

Arie Kirk, the editor in chief of the Statesman said that Packer has always been “really sensitve and that helps a lot with interviews, she can relate and see compassion.”

Kirk said she first meet Packer when she was an intern at KVNU and has always known that she had real talent and potential as “she can sense where the story is and know how to write it.”

Packer has a real connection with the students as USU, Kirk said, as she has really focused on features on campus and different types of stories that haven’t been done before.

The layouts that Packer has come up with on her own for the features section have impressed both Kirk and the faculty advisor Jay Wamsley.

Wamsley said that he hopes that “she hangs in with us for a couple more years” and was impressed with how she threw herself into the senior writing position as a freshman.

She doesn’t get stumped by too much, Wamsley said, and really gets along with the other editors and writers of the Statesman.

However Packer does face some challenges like a computer that gives her more grief than anyone else’s computer does in the office.

“I’d have a heart attack if I had the problems she has on her computers,” Rachel Christensen, assistant to the campus news editor said.

Many people comment on her difficulties with the piece of equipment saying it always picks on her more than anyone else’s weather it’s refusing to print or defaulting randomly to it’s original settings without saving anything.

Cameron Peterson, a photographer for the Statesman, said that Packer always has a positive attitude about things and that she is always chipper and is very dependable.

“Everyone misses an opportunity or has dropped the ball but Courtnie is so far ahead that she doesn’t have to worry about that ever happening,” Peterson said.

Packer isn’t described as the loudest in the office but she defiantly isn’t shy either and many find her easy to talk to and very personable.